


subtle like a lion's cage

by rieduentant



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Domestic, F/M, Horror, Incest, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-14
Updated: 2012-07-14
Packaged: 2017-11-09 23:35:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/459748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rieduentant/pseuds/rieduentant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For HSO Bonus Round 1: Dave/Rose, slice of life + surreal horror.</p>
            </blockquote>





	subtle like a lion's cage

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Not Even Jail" by Interpol.

Sometimes, when they’re sitting on the couch,

(the staticy soundtrack to Pokemon HeartGold blaring from Dave’s DS, cracked screen and dying speakers,)

(the fan whirring overhead and the thin scrape of Rose’s thumb and forefinger between pages,)

just a moment before she turns to him very slightly, blinks once as though waking from a dream, brushes the tip of her tongue against her front teeth, her careful sequence of movements before it’s time to say something to him about Nabokov he’ll only half understand and only a third want to—

Sometimes Dave feels like there’s a flicker, a lurch, a shimmer, a—some sort of _something_ , a weird movement in the corner of his eye where his sister should be, like Rose at rest is just a hologram and there’s a lag in loading the next animation and—

Sometimes, when he’s in his room, in his bed, when he ignores the powder blue analog clock on his nightstand and checks the time on his phone:

when it reads exactly an hour later than his foggy estimate, and he doesn’t know whether to be irritated by his mistake or thankful for the extra sleep:

the door opens and no light pools in, no hint of powder blue walls or pale grey carpet, no aging off-white glow from the hall bathroom light (always left on, they both have shit for night vision), his door opens and he can just barely see a purplish-black hand pushing it open, wrist limp and pressing with misshapen knuckles, as if the bones have been all used up in the forming of a long, long arm, its elbow unsteady and the arm is long enough that from the doorway it can reach out and run its claws from under his jaw all the way down his torso (but where he sees himself ripped open and bleeding he just feels warm sunlight, the bone-deep satisfaction of leaving a cold classroom in March and feeling the fresh spring sun thaw deathly bored limbs)

(And when he wakes again—)

(He doesn’t remember but he remembers he doesn’t and he remembers to not remember and after enough repeats “remember” really sounds like a word for “penis”—)

When he wakes again in the early morning, dawn light barely barely barely reaching his windowless room:

( _what kind of fuckin bedroom has zero windows isnt that like the opposite of jung swayze_ he’d said and petulantly dropped his suitcase when rooms were assigned; Rose said nothing and maybe hadn’t even been there)

There’s a soft glow in the hallway and his room is stenciled in cool black and the darkest shade lavender could ever be, and she’s in bed next to him with open eyes but he gets the sense that she hasn’t— _breathed_ —

Her lips part, and they look black, and her teeth are mother-of-pearl and seem very far away, and _that’s_ where his goddamn Spinal Tap shirt has been, what the hell—

“You didn’t do the dishes last night,” she says, quiet and careful like she’s trying to carry her laptop, coffee, and textbook from the breakfast island to the window seat.

“Oh, my god,” Dave says and punches the comforter, flips himself as many degrees away from her as he can before it settles back on his aching shoulders. “I’ll do them, I don’t know, sometime today, just chill.”

A long silence stretches; he nearly falls back asleep but she still hasn’t actually moved: did her mouth move when she talked? He doesn’t know, he can picture it but it’s a half-dream instead of a memory, he can’t even remember if his eyes are open right now so what does it matter?

(But it does matter because he kind of wonders if she’s not real—)

So he punches the comforter again, flops over to face her, brings his knees up so he doesn’t roll onto his face and his shin brushes some part of her and it’s rough, really rough, almost scaly? Dave looks at her and she smiles, coquettish but real, it creases the corners of her pale eyes and shows her straight and modest teeth. He wants to run his tongue along her teeth, just like she does, what a fucking dorky tic—

“I think I’m too real, actually,” Rose says, and this time he definitely sees her mouth moving, her eyes looking into and past his. He shifts a little, his knee brushes her thigh; it feels like poison seeping into his skin, dull and aching and sick.

He blinks. “Huh?”

“Good morning.”

“Mmph.”

(Sometimes, when he wakes up in the middle of the night,

nothing comes into his room,

and nothing tears open his ribcage or pulls out his tongue with dainty, soothing hands,

and when he wakes up again Rose isn’t there.

When he comes down for breakfast, and she’s there on her stool with her perfect posture and her skirt fluttering in the cold, wet draft they can’t find the source of:

He forgets to wonder who makes their breakfast, or when the two of them started living here, or what happened to the roommates who must have lived in the other bedrooms,

and chooses to huff his morning breath on her hair.)


End file.
